I didn’t get to go snowmobiling because the weather didn’t cooperate, but that didn’t stop us from visiting Troy and Krista in Sacramento this weekend. We walked around downtown, ate good food, and visited the Crocker Art Museum.
The Crocker is in an old mansion. Half the pleasure of being in it is walking around the building itself. I took many pictures of tile and woodwork like this one:
They had an exhibit of art from original Warner Bros cartoons. It was interesting to see the evolution of characters like Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny. I never really thought about how many man hours went into one of those cartoons before. It made me respect animation in a new way. My favorite part was the backgrounds of the cartoons, which were tiny, brightly colored paintings. Unfortunately, the security guard wouldn’t let me take pictures of the Warner Bros’ exhibit. Who knows why. However, the contemporary art section had a bunch of Peep-like bunnies in a canoe. Here is a picture of that:
The other thing I liked at the Crocker was this old cigarette machine that had been converted so that you could buy cigarette-carton-sized art with $5 tokens. You buy the tokens in the museum store, put them in the machine, and pull the knob:
Krista and Kyle got their art just fine. Krista got an olive key chain and Kyle got a little painting. But when we tried to buy my art, the knob got stuck and we had to get a museum guy to help us while all these snotty art people looked on. It turned out that the slot my art had been in was empty, but you couldn’t tell because they had put a multi-colored weight in the slot that looked just like the art. The guy got mad at me and told me to pick something, so I pointed to another slot. He gave me a block of wood with brown and green splotches on it. It looked like 1970s kitsch you would find in a thrift store.
I tried to not show how disappointed I was by the lame art and mean people, but Troy and Krista could tell so they gave me their other token. (!) This time, the knob worked and I got a cool painting of safety pins. They are good friends. [ETA: Troy and Krista, not the safety pins.]
Krista and Troy
Kyle in front of a giant piece of aluminum
Me in a house of mirrors